Oracle Turbocharges MySQL Database

There’s a lesson this week for the open source MySQL database: Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

This week Oracle said it’s made MySQL — a database it acquired in its 2010 purchase of Sun — 70 times faster than previous versions. The new MySQL Cluster 7.2 database can now do 1.05 billion reads per minute, according to Oracle’s benchmarks.

The update comes as good news to a skeptical developer community that at one time feared Oracle was going to ax, or at least hobble, MySQL in favor if its lucrative Oracle Database.

Just before the Sun acquisition, Michael Widenius, the original author of MySQL, begged developers to “help save MySQL from Oracle’s clutches,” kicking off online campaigns to save the project.

In March of 2011 EnterpriseDB released a survey of some 600 IT professionals on Oracle’s control of MySQL and Java, the other software it picked up with the Sun acquisition. Forty-six percent of respondents said they expected open source projects under Oracle to stagnate and more than 42 percent said they expect MySQL prices to increase at renewal time.

Last September, Oracle sparked outrage when it added three new costly extensions for MySQL Enterprise. The move caused some to wonder whether Oracle is in the process of “forking itself” — making a new version of the code that will follow a separate path from the free version.

Oracle could not be reached for comment, but this week’s news makes it clear that the free MySQL is still alive at Oracle.